Offprint from The Silk Road 11 (2013).

The Silk Road is an annual publication of the Silkroad Foundation, supplied in a print version to academic libraries and also freely avail- able on the Internet.

The complete volume 11 is available on-line at .

Information about submissions to the journal is available at . EXPANDING GEOGRAPHIC HORIZONS ALONG THE MARITIME SILK ROAD

Daniel C. Waugh University of Washington, Seattle

Hyunhee Park. Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-modern Asia. Cambridge, etc.: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xxviii, 276 pp. ISBN 978-1-107-01868-6.

ark’s book is a revision of her Yale dissertation one can appreciate her consicious decision for practi- P (supervised by Valerie Hansen). She sets out “to cal reasons of scope not to treat South and Southeast understand the extent of the geographic knowledge Asia, this then has to compromise what she says about that existed between two of the principal actors that the ways in which knowledge was transmitted. More- created this interconnected world of Asia, namely over, if Richthofen seemed to focus too much on over- and the Islamic world, as well as the processes land routes, Park consciously chooses to do the re- by which they gained this knowledge over centuries verse, emphasizing the maritime connections. This is of continuous contact” (p. 1) Specifi cally, her ques- in fact a welcome change in emphasis from traditional tions include: “What geographic information can be treatments of “the Silk Roads.” However, too often gleaned from Arabic and Chinese narratives: What her downgrading of overland contacts seems forced, are the formats and genres of geographic and travel especially when she is discussing transmission of im- writing that present these bits of information? What is portant knowledge that explicitly arrived via over- their status as fact or fi ction, and how can we evaluate land contacts. On the Chinese end, the south is privi- that status? What new information can we fi nd in each leged; the areas controlled by the northern dynasties period, and how can we interpret it within the context after the fall of the Tang largely ignored. In the Islamic of the Sino-Islamic contacts? What are the possible world, Inner Asia gets short shrift (even if some of the conduits of new information about other societies? key intellectuals such as Mahmud al-Kashgarī and al- Finally, in what ways did increased cross-cultural un- Bīrūnī, whom she discusses, were from ). derstanding broaden the overall world view of these Another aspect of Park’s approach which deserves two societies and lead to further cross-cultural con- emphasis involves her method for analyzing informa- tact?” (p. 13) In addition to textual sources, she con- tion in her sources. While she is concerned to provide siders material and visual evidence, especially maps. a sense of context for the various sources, in the fi rst She brings to this agenda enviable linguistic ability in instance her criterion for their value is a modern one: the major East Asian languages, Arabic, French, and she specifi es (p. 203, n.4), “when I refer to ‘precise’ or at least some Persian. The agenda is ambitious, the re- ‘accurate’ depictions, I mean those that are in accord sults somewhat uneven. with our modern-day understanding.” Fair enough, While it is true that the book “is the fi rst to treat both but the resulting treatment of the material largely is sides of the exchange equally, using a comparative a positivist one, often expressed in wishful thinking analysis of major primary sources in Chinese, Arabic, about how a given source somehow might be con- and Persian,” in a sense her task is the same one Ferdi- strued as evidence of a march toward greater under- nand von Richthofen and a good many of his follow- standing, deeper knowledge or the like. In the fi rst ers set when initiating the study of what he termed instance here, the emphasis is on how political and “the Silk Roads.” The emphasis here is on great em- economic considerations fueled a conscious effort to pires/civilizations. For Richthofen it was Han China learn more about those on the other end of Asia. One and Rome; for Park it is China and the Islamic worlds, might wish that she had tried to enter more deeply even if at various times fragmented politically. One into the thought world of those who produced, quot- consequence of this approach then is to downplay ed or copied the sources. To have done so might have what comes between the bookends of Asia. While widened our appreciation of how the old and the new

The Silk Road 11 (2013): 200–214 200 Copyright © 2013 Daniel C. Waugh Copyright © 2013 The Silkroad Foundation often were combined in incompatible ways (if we we should not necessarily believe the secret of pa- judge by a standard of progress toward deeper and per manufacture came to the Islamic world only as more accurate knowledge), and how in some cases the a consequence of that battle.1 In the interpretation evidence reveals not how much people knew but rath- here (p. 29), the Arab-Chinese confl ict in Inner Asia er how little. Insofar as there are problems here, they and the Tang withdrawal there and replacement by arise most frequently in the treatment of the relation- other polities (notably ) meant the cutting off ship between text and image, a matter to be discussed of the overland routes and stimulated the rise of the more fully below. maritime routes in the later Tang period. One might well ask whether “this situation” in Central Asia (as Park divides the material by three major chrono- opposed to the Arab conquest of Sogdiana) then ex- logical periods — 750–1260, 1260–1368, and 1368–1500 plains “the disappearance of non-Chinese groups like — and within them treats fi rst Chinese perceptions of the merchant Sogdians.”2 It is helpful to know that the Islamic world and then the converse, the percep- Du Huan’s “remarkably accurate and rich knowledge tions of China in the Islamic world. To a considerable about the Islamic world” may largely refl ect what he degree her periodization relates to the developments saw in Kufa, but the implication that one might then in maritime connections between east and west Asia, generalize from that perspective to other parts of the which as she notes, grew steadily after 750. Within that Islamic world is a bit misleading. Moreover, even if fi rst period, initially the contacts seem mainly to have he conveyed a vague understanding of the vast extent been in the hands of Muslims who came to China, but of Arab conquests, at least from the evidence present- in successive sub-periods, while there was a growth of ed here there is no indication he was specifi c about Chinese “direct” contact, trade came to involve inter- those conquests having reached as far as the Iberian mediaries, with, she argues, a consequent decline in peninsula. Indeed, Park to some extent seems to con- the transmission of information. She emphasizes what tradict herself when she appropriately indicates that we have long known that the Mongol/Yuan period Du Huan’s “Western Sea” probably meant for him the represented the acme of cross-Asian exchange of . knowledge, but unlike many others who have focused on the as an overland empire, she stresses Of primary importance for expanding Chinese their interest in the maritime trade. One could quibble knowledge of the West as maritime trade blossomed as to whether 1368 (the end of the Yuan) is the best was a description called “The Route to the Foreign dividing point between her second and third periods, Countries across the Sea from Guangzhou” (Guang- given the fact that in the fi rst third of the 15th century zhou tong haiyi dao 廣州通海夷道) compiled around there were such important exchanges between the the year 800 CE by Jia Dan 賈耽 and included in the Timurids and Ming, and given the evidence of the New History of the (Xin Tangshu 新唐書). Ming “treasure fl eets.” Most would agree that a peri- This is “the earliest extant document from either od of decline in cross-Asian contacts followed, leading China or the Islamic world that describes the maritime up to the appearance of the Europeans in the Indian route between Guangzhou and the Persian Gulf” (p. Ocean. Of course, as we know, even that supposedly 32). Park conveniently illustrates on a schematic dia- game-changing event has come under scrutiny from gram the main places he mentioned, which seem to the standpoint of its impact on both the Indian Ocean connect to two itineraries, one East-West and the other exchange and the fate of the overland routes. coming up from the east African coast and intersect- ing with it. Undoubtedly the itineraries refl ect infor- Even though, as Park readily acknowledges, there mation obtained from Muslim merchants or sailors. has been substantial scholarly attention to individual She nicely juxtaposes (pp. 30–31) this scheme with a texts, for many readers her summaries and quotations map illustrating locations in the Indian Ocean world from eyewitness sources or the surviving compilations where fi nds of 8th–10th century Chinese ceramics have that quoted them will be new and most welcome. One been made, providing physical documentation of the might wish, of course, for an appendix (or compan- trade.3 ion volume) with full texts in translation, and in some More problematic than Jia Dan’s textual descrip- cases, parallel textual comparisons would have best tion is his Map of Chinese and Non-Chinese Territories illustrated borrowings and edits from one source to in the World (Hainei huayi tu 海內華夷圖), which has another. not survived and at best can be “reconstructed” from The fi rst of her signifi cant Chinese authors is Du evidence in a wood-block printed atlas of the end Huan 杜環, captured by the Arabs at the Battle of of the 11th century (and two somewhat later maps). Talas in 751, an event taken here as seminal for cer- While Park recognizes that such reconstruction may tain issues of east-west exchange, even if (as Jona- be seen as problematic, she optimistically concludes than Bloom has stressed but Park chooses to ignore) from the indications Jia Dan must have been a source

201 for the Song-era maps that his original “represented scheme whereby geographic information was being the [then] sum of geographic knowledge that existed updated, even if, true, the maps are the fi rst which in China.” “Jia Dan’s map may have contained even have survived in China that “graphically portray the more information about foreign places than the evi- overland routes to all the countries of the western re- dence reveals. We cannot be sure if his map actually gions which previously had only been described in contained all seven of the routes to China that he de- written, rather than illustrated form” (p. 40). I cannot scribes verbally in a surviving written source ... How- share Park’s optimism that the Buddhist “Map of the ever, sources from the Tang period show that many Five Indian States in the West” (Xitu wuyin zhi tu 西 maps about foreign territories existed then, including 土五印之圖), specifi cally tied to Xuanzang, “bears re- a map of brought to China by Wang Xuance alistic features such as a clear coastline outlining the [王玄策] (fl ourished seventh century)... Unfortunate- triangular-shaped Indian subcontinent” (p. 40), even ly, all of these Tang maps are lost...” (p. 37) if she undoubtedly is correct that the distortion of Indeed, the reproductions of the Song-era maps, the all the land mass into a rectangle probably embodies fi rst ones we actually do have, suggest that by the 12th the Chinese understanding of a “rectangular-shaped century Chinese cartography was able to produce a world” (importantly, one might add, a concept of a remarkably accurate depiction of China. However, fl at earth). The Buddhist “Geographic Map of the 東 the “depiction” of foreign locations was confi ned to Land of China to the East” (Dong zhendan dili tu 震旦地理圖) listing a selection of names in the margins. This is a does add to the older information some perfect illustration of the point Cordell Yee empha- names — such as Arabia (Dashi) and (Baida) sized in his (granted, controversial) treatment of Chi- — that must have come from more recent texts, but nese cartography in the standard history edited by the fact that these few newer names are left fl oating Harley and Woodward: namely that the textual tra- in the southwest ocean may not simply refl ect “limita- ditions in geography took precedence in China, and tions of space” (p. 42). There is no reason to think the texts were not necessarily “illustrated” accurately in cartographer would have known where to place them maps.4 Park’s introduction (p. 35) of Pei Xiu 裴秀 in any accurate visual sense other than “out there” (224–271 CE), whose principles for drawing maps in- on the fringes of the known world. In fact, Park later deed seem to have been advanced even if we do not admits that “Chinese cartographers only drew maps have concrete examples of their being put into prac- of China proper accurately” (p. 58). I suspect to some tice, is somewhat misleading, as any discussion of the extent Park’s treatment of these maps, which embody Chinese grid system that fi rst appears on the Song-era a Buddhist world view that has little, if anything, to maps needs careful explanation of the fact that it is not do with pre-modern political and economic concerns, the scientifi c equivalent of the grid system theorized may have been compromised in her book by editorial in the West by Ptolemy. It would have been helpful demands that she cut her text. Her separate article had Park specifi cally engaged with Yee’s discussion (2010) on these maps in fact does a better job of con- of these matters, but instead she glosses over it, leav- textualizing them for what they are rather than em- ing us with the impression that textual description phasizing what they are not. and mapping advanced in concert, even if not entirely There is, however, every reason to believe that the overlapping in content. She assumes, for example, well-documented expansion of maritime trade un- that Jia Dan, “who valued much of drawing precisely der the Southern Song contributed signifi cantly to measured maps,” “also used a grid system for his pre- the information available in China about the Islamic cise mapmaking” (p. 35). world. It seems that in this period Chinese merchants Other than the maps which seem to have refl ected were signifi cant in at least the eastern region of the offi cial government initiatives, there are ones pro- maritime trade, even as Muslim merchants from as duced by Buddhist scholars in the 13th century in- far away as Siraf in the Persian Gulf were important tended to illustrate, if schematically, the important fi gures in the Chinese ports. Offi cials involved in gov- Buddhist sites visited by Xuanzang back in the 7th ernment administration of shipping compiled manu- century. I am somewhat puzzled by Park’s assertion als, notably Zhou Qufei’s 周去非 Notes from the Land that on them “country locations are plotted with rela- beyond the Passes (Lingwai daida 嶺外代答) (1178) and tive accuracy when compared to written geographic Rugua’s 趙汝适 Description of the Foreign Lands sources” (p. 38). By this she seems to mean the newer (Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志) (1215) (pp. 46ff). Zhou’s book in- written sources conveying knowledge of the Islamic cludes two chapters on the Islamic world in which, world, not the written sources from a much earlier among other topics, he elaborates on religious beliefs century which were the concern of the 13th-century and practices. His treatment of the sea routes parallels authors of the maps. There is no reason to expect the that earlier by Jia Dan but contains additional practical maps should represent some kind of progress in a detail. Half a century after Zhou Qufei, as Superinten-

202 dent of Merchant Shipping in Quanzhou, Zhao Rugua involves more than just commentary by “politicians” drew on his predecessor’s account but supplemented (an anachronistic term) regarding foreign policy. The it with other sources.5 His description of what is prob- positioning of China with reference to vaguely de- ably Baghdad is quite detailed, and he knew at least fi ned foreign regions of arguably little intrinsic inter- something about Egypt. Of course one might question est for Chinese intellectuals tells us much about the whether his comment that the sources of the Nile were shaping of identity.6 as yet unknown really demonstrates (as Park suggests) Park opens her analysis of early Islamic geographi- how “encounters between Muslims and Chinese went cal works by stressing that, unlike the inwardly- beyond commercial transactions and reached the level focused Chinese, the Muslim geographers from the [of] cultural intellectual exchange”(p. 53). Hirth and very beginning “conceived of a larger world, a feature Rockhill’s statement about the Song interest in of the worldview they inherited from Greek and Per- geography is certainly worth recalling here, if only to sian geographers before them.” The respective maps have provoked a possible rebuttal: are a clear indication of this: “Chinese cartographers Geographical studies, though extensively applied only drew maps of China proper accurately, while to every part of China proper during the twelfth Muslim cartographers could create world maps that and thirteenth centuries, were treated with con- plotted even distant China and its neighbors with rela- siderable contempt where foreign countries were tive accuracy” (p. 58). Of course “relative accuracy” is concerned ... The knowledge of foreign countries at best a slippery concept. Apart from the question of was an obscure, unprofi table hobby, taken up who had the tools and perspective with which to draw only by a few offi cials whose special dutries dis- a world map, in looking at the weight given informa- posed them to make these researches, and which tion about China within the larger corpus of Islamic in no way appealed to the public fancy. Confucian geographic literature, one has to wonder whether Chi- philosphers actually threw discredit on what was na was any more central to Islamic geographers than then known of the geography of foreign parts...” was the Islamic world to their counterparts in China. [Chau Ju-Kua, p. 38]. In reviewing the evidence from texts and maps, While Park stresses how Zhou and Zhao’s accounts Park clearly is wanting to believe that amongst Is- include “detailed sailing guides to the Islamic world” lamic world geographers “information aggregated” (p. 53), regrettably her decision not to focus on South (p. 90) in kind of progressive fashion, culminating in and Southeast Asia leaves the reader to learn else- the “great syntheses” by al-Idrīsī and Yāqūt. In fact where what they wrote on those regions. Given the though, she cannot avoid the contradictions inher- fact that the maps she discusses do such a bad job of ent in any scheme that imposes a modern standard of depicting any of the coastal realities beyond China progress on pre-modern history, and she ends up ad- proper, one really would like to know more about mitting that after the 10th century, much of Islamic ge- what the texts contain, if Chinese readers were to be ography was derivative, updating of information was able “to imagine a series of ports that formed a line at best uneven, and the world maps “retained many that stretched all the way to the Islamic world” (p. inaccuracies” even as al-Idrīsī’s “Ptolemaic frame- 54). Furthermore, one wishes for some additional in- work contains accuracy to resemble modern maps”[!] formation on the evidence for the distribution of the (p. 90). As much as anything, the conundrums here texts. Park makes the important point (p. 50) that (some easily avoidable) result from her tendency wood-block printing opened the way for wide distri- to want to treat “Islamic geography” as some kind bution of geographic information. Zhou’s work was of unifi ed or unifi able entity, even as she obviously printed several times under the Ming (pp. 214–15, n. knows better and occasionally says as much. 86). But earlier? And, is it reasonable to conclude that wood-block printing necessarily “improved the qual- I wonder whether her results would have been ity of geographic knowledge that circulated” (p. 50) if different had her publisher allowed her more space such printing also disseminated what from the stand- in which to expand her analysis of each individual point of “geographic knowledge” was a dated Bud- source. Yes, she provides succinct and largely well- dhist cosmography embodied in the Song-era maps informed descriptions of the provenance of the sourc- discussed above? Neither printing, nor for that matter es and relevant facts of authors’ biographies. But there literacy, can unequivocably be shown to be agents of seems to be no space here (or inclination) to move be- progress. While Park cites de Weerdt’s valuable recent yond “what the text contains about China” to a deeper article (2009) on Song maps, her summary footnote (p. contextualization that would really clarify each au- 211, n. 42) regarding what de Weerdt says about their thor’s goals and method. A possibly fruitful way to reception does not really do justice to that discussion. clarify some of the issues would have been to adopt The issue of reception, which merits serious attention, the distinction, developed by Aleksandr V. Podo-

203 sinov (1978) in a seminal essay 35 years ago, between Al-Mas‛ūdi’s statement that Caliph al-Ma’mūn’s map what he called the chorographic and cartographic ap- was superior to that of Ptolemy tells us really very proaches to geographical information in pre-modern little about either; it is important to remember that we sources.7 His distinction is between what we might have no example of Ptolemaic maps from Ptolemy’s term a possibly subjective descriptive approach and own time — only much later interpretations which an “objective” or scientifi c one. At the core of the may or may not accurately depict his intent. Even in cartographic approach is the use of astronomically cases where we know that the authors of geographical determined precise coordinates for latitude and lon- treatises in the Islamic world envisaged maps to illus- gitude, which for accurate two-dimensional mapping trate them (and where maps that supposedly are those (as measured by a modern standard) has to include a same illustrations or good copies of them are extant), methodology that accomodates the reality of a spheri- it is clear that the mapping tended to be schematic. cal earth. In the , as Park’s quo- Maps may have served as mnemonic devices and, as tation above seems to suggest, Ptolemy’s pioneering Park suggests (p. 73) when she turns to their analy- approach laid the basis for the development of mod- sis, can help us to understand the conceptual world ern cartography. Later, where she discusses the begin- embodied in written sources. However, what were nings of Islamic cartography, somewhat unclearly she considered to be the more precise details (as was also says that some “features of the Balkhī School maps true in the Chinese case) were contained in the accom- resemble reconstructions of Ptolemy’s longitudinal panying texts. and latitudinal coordinates” (p. 77), even though one Even though Park opens with al-Ma’mūn’s proj- authoritative treatment of Islamic cartography insists ect for compiling geographic information and spec- that even those Islamic geographers who knew Ptol- ulates on his map, the more substantial fi rst part of 8 emy’s work failed to apply it to the making of maps. her chapter on the Islamic sources deals with the It is important to distinguish between the inspira- descriptive texts, beginning with the important Ibn tion Ptolemy provided that indeed sparked an effort Khurradādhbih, who became director of posts in the among Islamic-world elites to measure more precisely in the 9th century and complied geographic coordinates of key locations and any seri- a very infl uential description of routes and realms ous effort to translate this information into a scientifi c (Kitāb al-Masālik wa’l-mamālik). The great bulk of its map. Park seems to be suggesting that the supposed itineraries lies in the central lands of the Caliphate. “reliance on [Ptolemaic] precedent” was retrograde, He did draw on information about several itineraries and that, notwithstanding such an obsolete approach, of Jewish merchants who traded across Asia all the somehow the mapmakers were able to incorporate way to China. And one small part of his book traces new and more accurate information from fi rst-hand a maritime itinerary that contains a brief description observation. Yes, there is evidence of the latter, but of southeastern China, gives some sense of Chinese did it really result in more scientifi cally constructed products, and at least hints at knowledge of lands fur- maps? At very least here one might wish for a clearer ther east. articulation of what could reasonably have served as the basis for the creation of maps that might match What Park might have clarifi ed in her discussion our modern expectations for accuracy. of Ibn Khurradādhbih is that the more fantastic sto- ries he incorporates into the work (as opposed to the In fact what the earliest extant Islamic maps depict “objective” offi cial account of routes) seem to have is generally schematic, with the greatest detail derived been insertions in the a second version of the book he not from any mathematically precise tables, but rather produced for a different patron several decades after from chorographic sources, in the fi rst instance itiner- the fi rst version. Thus, even with this one author, one aries. The itineraries themselves more often than not may establish how different purposes could lead to are composites, not records of single journeys. Such results of greater or lesser value as measured by some considerations then behoove us to treat with skepti- modern standard. To recognize this might also then cism any attempt to reconstruct missing maps in or- lead to a fuller treatment of the adab genres than Park der to fi nd in them scientifi c cartography, starting provides — that is insofar as geographic information with the supposedly pathbreaking one commissioned in the Islamic world really did become “popular” (as by Caliph al-Ma’mūn in the 9th century and ending Park claims it did), its embellishment and transforma- with the one inscribed on silver for the Norman King tion into other literary genres needs serious consider- of Sicily Roger II in the 12th century. That said, yes, ation. A rare exception is her brief discussion of the as Park describes, we can and should appreciate what 10th–century writer Ibn al-Faqīh, offered here mainly the creators and their patrons at least professed they to illustrate how “folkloric” approaches of such writ- were attempting to do, whether or not there is any ers of belles lettres, while popular, contributed little to hard evidence to prove that they achieved that result. the progress of scientifi c geography (pp. 75–76). Like-

204 wise, the “Wonders of India” and “Thousand and One they knew it “a quite accurate representation of Eur- Nights” tales receive only passing mention (p. 64). asia” (p. 76). Parts of it and North Africa, yes. Inser- tion of generalized symbols for geographical features Ibn Khurradādhbih’s treatment of China seems such as mountains and seas is only the vaguest refl ec- quite cryptic when compared with that in another tion of the incorporation of updated knowledge. text composed at the same time in the middle of the 9th century. The anonymous “Accounts of China and In the larger in the Islamic India” (Akhbār al-Sīn wa-l-Hind) has come down to us world, al-Muqaddasī and al-Bīrūnī loom large pre- in a larger compilation of the early 10th century attrib- cisely because of their serious scientifi c credentials uted to Abū Zayd, who, signifi cantly, was from Siraf, and methodologies. However, it is critically important a port on the Persian Gulf which fi gured prominently that one not distort their accomplishments either in de- in the early trade with India and points farther east. In scriptive geography or in mapping. Al-Muqqadasī is addition to the anonymous text, Abū Zayd obtained the writer considered to be the most sophisticated and from other merchants, one a certain Suleyman, a good critical of all the Islamic geographers. He laid out care- deal of information regarding the China trade and fully a scientifi c methodology (p. 77), but he confi nes Muslim involvement in it. With generous quotations his attention to the Central Islamic lands. His only and summaries, Park conveys well the richness of this mention of China is a somewhat confused designa- material. However, by extracting only the China infor- tion of a “Sea of China” that may at one point include mation from the anonymous text (which integrates it even all the Indian Ocean, and his maps (insofar as thoroughly in a consciously comparative fashion with we have them) are amongst the sketchiest of all those 11 the material on India), she lessens our appreciation of attributed to the Balkhī School. Apart from his ma- that one source.9 She merely emphasizes (p. 64) how jor study of India, al-Bīrūnī provides new information striking it is that the text regards China as of equal on China, which came to him, it seems, primarily via importance with India, given the fact that China was a Liao embassy that traveled via the overland routes more distant for an author based in the Middle East. to Ghazna in Afghanistan. Obviously this fact makes Park uncomfortable, where she is wanting to maintain Abū Zayd’s compilation includes specifi c, if not that the overland routes were “no longer fl ourishing” wholly accurate, information on the Huang Chao 黃 (pp. 79–80). The world map attached to al-Bīrūnī’s 巢 rebellion in 874–884 CE. Importantly it resulted in book on astrology is indeed of interest for features the decimation of the foreign population in the ma- that differentiate it from those commonly found on jor port of Guangzhou and may have contributed to the Balkhī School maps (pp. 78–80), but how far do what Park emphasizes was a “restructuring” of the we want to go in claiming it “more closely matches maritime routes, long-distance travel all the way to modern day representations”? It is highly schematic. the Middle East giving way to networked connections India is shown as an extension of China projecting in over shorter distances. Consequent to this, while Chi- Ptolemaic fashion around part of the Indian Ocean. nese knowledge of the Islamic world seems to have Khurasan is China’s neighbor to the north (hardly one increased (the examples being in the works of Zhou of the “places close to China” in any geographic real- Qufei and Zhao Rugua), “Middle Eastern knowledge ity we would recognize). That the large land mass of appears to have declined.”10 What she seems to mean the Ptolemaic tradition that extended eastward from here is that for a long time there were few signifi cant Africa is gone is of real interest — the Indian Ocean additions to the body of information on China avail- opens into the encircling sea. But what does this tell able in the Islamic world. us? Could it refl ect some desire by the artist to cre- Park transitions to cartography by discussing al- ate a symmetrical composition? Or does it illustrate Mas‘ūdī’s puzzlement over how remains from an In- that the more serious Arab scientists (al-Muqaddasī is dian Ocean stitched-plank vessel might have ended explicit in this regard) were unwilling to plot on their up in the Mediterranean, the most likely explanation maps or describe places about which they knew noth- being a connection around the north of the “known ing? And this new representation of the Indian Ocean world” via the encircling ocean which was commonly and Africa as a more modest peninsula oriented to the depicted on the circular world maps developed by south was far from widely accepted, even if, as we the so-called Balkhī School of cartographers in the shall see, it seems to suggest an important link to some 10th–11th centuries. It is unlikely that they “mapped signifi cant later world maps. the entire known world, including China, before they Park is right to bring to our attention this and other composed regional geographic treatises and maps world maps that depart from the dominant Balkhī comparing different parts of the Islamic world” (p. School model, although her use of them at times seems 75, my emphasis). Moreover, it is hard to see in their forced. An example is the unique map attributed to largely standardized circular maps of the world as Mahmud al-Kashgarī as the illustration to his impor-

205 tant study of Turkic dialects. Al-Kashgarī contributed nifi cance of overland routes: Marwazī “gained addi- incredibly important new information on Inner Asia, tional information through channels created by lim- but beyond his apparent understanding that northern ited connections between the overland and sea routes and southern China were ruled by different dynasties, at the time” (p. 82). does he really say much of substance about China? More important are her generalizations (which beg, And there is reason to think that an illustrator other however, for refi nement) regarding on the one hand than al-Kashgar added on the edges of his map the ī the uneven distribution of information about the Far locations peripheral to the inner Asian regions that East in Islamic sources (areas closer to China tend to were al-Kashgar ’s main concern.12 At very least, al- ī have more on it) and on the other hand the sharing Kashgar is yet another nail in the coffi n in which one ī of that information. What is needed here is clearly ar- should bury attempts to downgrade the importance of ticulated genealogies of traditions within the world overland routes. of Islamic geography, which might then enable us to Park deserves credit for bringing to our attention come up with something analogous to what Boris a very recent discovery, an early manuscript Book of N. Zakhoder years ago (1962, 1967) did in determin- Curiosities (Kitāb gharā’ib) which contains several maps ing how for a number of important Islamic geogra- including a not yet fully analyzed one that “illustrates phers there was a common core of a “Caspian col- the Silk Road extending across Central Asia without lection” of information on Eastern Europe. A related connecting to China” (p. 80).13 She seizes on this to example is what Tibbets does in his stemmata illus- suggest it refl ects the “decline in overland trade” in trating the relationships among the manuscript tradi- the 10th and 11th centuries, although, as with the al- tions that preserve the work of the Balkhī School (His- Kashgarī map, it is also evidence that “some partial tory of Cartography 1993, esp. pp. 113, 138). Even if the overland contact between the Islamic world and emphasis is on sharing (with an eye to “progress” as China appears likely.” In fact there is much more defi ned largely by the accumulation of new material), which might be said about the geography represented there also needs to be a clear articulation of the limits the maps of the Book of Curiosities, not the least be- to progress. It is possible to document how different ing the suggestion that its compiler knew about an authors describing the same important region might overland route extending from Northen India up into take very little from a supposedly authoritative prede- Tibet or through the mountains of Southeast Asia to cessor whose work they knew and in effect approach China. Whether the maps themselves can be used as the task of description de novo.14 evidence about how active certain itineraries were For Park and many authorities, the work of the ear- is another matter, since they are highly schematic — ly geographers in the Islamic world culminates in al- the one of the Indian Ocean depicts an oval-shaped Idrīsī and Yakūt, whose syntheses incorporated much enclosed lake. The interesting fact that a map scale is of the earlier material and added some that was new. in the margins of the world map is worth noting, al- In light of what she has already described in some de- though there is no reason to believe it had anything to tail with an emphasis on accuracy and “modern” fea- do with the construction of the map itself. tures, how are we to parse Park’s enthusiastic take on That new information about China did in fact make the vision of al-Idrīsī’s patron, Roger II, the Norman its way into descriptive texts between the late 10th king of Sicily in the mid-12th century? His interest in and 12th centuries, some of it attesting to the continu- geography, we are told, “sounds like an expression ing importance of overland connections, can be seen of the kind of scientifi c curiosity beginning to awaken from the important anonymous Persian text, The Re- in Christian Europe,” which “eventually would re- gions of the World (Hudūd al-Ālam) (p. 81). While Park place older standards of geography, whose approach highlights the fact that it contains information on East to making world maps was symbolic, fanciful, and Turkestan, a bit more is needed here to emphasize myth-based rather than scientifi c” (p. 83). Yet did that the compiler’s main source indeed seems to have this vision really translate into something so forward- been a northern one. And, if anything, his concerns looking, any more than did the apparently scientifi c focus more on Tibet than on China, which occupies in visions of Caliph al-Ma’mūn or al-Muqaddasī? This fact a rather small part of his world. Marwazī’s 12th- may sound heretical, but, as Gustave von Grunebaum century work, as she appreciates but could even more long ago (1962) articulated for a different set of exam- fully explain, contains much more, some derived ples, maybe the best way to characterize the indeed from simply repeating information in al-Bīrūnī, but impressive accomplishments of al-Idrīsī and Yakūt is also material that is new, undoubtedly derived from as a kind of “cultural classicism,” efforts at encyclope- informants who used the maritime routes. Yet here as dic compilations which, rather than looking forward, earlier, Park fi nds it diffi cult to accomodate how much are anchoring in place a body of knowledge that, if evidence points in the direction of the continuing sig- anything, might end up closing the doors to real in-

206 novation stimulated, among other things, by cultural been there. Some of the informants are known to us, borrowing. but many are anonymous and their role suggested largely by somewhat vague indications that the size- What we fi nd in al-Idrīsī is systematically orga- able communities of merchants or seamen could be nized compendia of geographic information region valuable sources. Oral transmission of practical infor- by region, where possible based on whatever new in- mation about navigation, what products were avail- formation he could acquire, but including contradic- able in various ports, or what rulers presided over tory information if he could not decide which source them is one thing. Communication by translation of was correct. For each region there is a map, drawn to geographic treatises compiled within the other cul- a standard that allows the regional maps to be con- tural region and the exchange of scientifi c knowledge nected into a very large one covering al-Idrīsī’s world. of how to construct maps is another matter. Indeed, That said, however, while he drew on and modifi ed before the Mongol period, as Park recognizes, there is the earlier work based on Persian and Greek sources little evidence of such exchange. Since many aspects (notably Ptolemy) as corrected by earlier Islamic sci- of cultural exchange in the Mongol period have been entists such as al-Khwarezmī, al-Idrisī’s maps are not thoroughly studied (as Park communicates), my com- constructed by what we would consider to be mod- ments here will focus primarily on cartography. This ern scientifi c methods. Park makes this fairly clear will require looking beyond the chronological bound- in stating that what we fi nd here is “a rough means aries of the . for plotting longitudinal and latitudinal location” (p. 84), where the emphasis certainly should be on the Modern maps generally have a well-defi ned projec- “rough.” But notwithstanding her assertions that both tion, a scale, and place objects with reference to a grid the reconstructed large world map (based on the sec- (graticule) marking latitude and longitude. Discus- tional maps) and the single circular world map are sions of progress in cartography then naturally focus the “fi rst extant world maps that drew most of Eur- considerable attention on the use of a grid, what it asia and North Africa with detail and accuracy,” the may have meant to the cartographer, and whether or reader begins to lose confi dence as she admits most not it developed autonomously within a given culture of what he knew about China was largely based on or might instead have been borrowed. While one can old information. “Like the Balkhī School and al-Bīrūnī hypothesize the use of a grid for drawing maps where maps, al-Idrīsī placed Central Asia north of China, we may have only a description that seems to suggest which is roughly correct, and follows the Greek tradi- such a “scientifi c” approach (for example, in the map tion of locating the legendary places of Gog and Ma- project of Caliph Ma’mūn), one needs to look most gog northeast of China...” (p. 84). Certainly it is dif- closely in the fi rst instance at surviving maps, which fi cult to recognize in al-Idrīsī’s world anything close may, of course, be much later in date than when the to what we would understand as the contours of India grid was fi rst used. and southeast Asia, and his Africa extends all the way For China, the fi rst such surviving map is on a 12th- to the east, encompassing most of the Indian Ocean. century (Song period) stele, where the grid of uniform As Irina G. Konovalova, who has carefully analyzed squares likely was superimposed on a map drawn all of al-Idrīsī’s information for Eastern Europe, em- originally by ground survey methods. The grid here phasizes, the nature of his (and other medieval geog- served not as the framework on which to construct the raphers’) methods renders absurd any attempt to lo- map but rather simply as a device allowing the viewer cate many of their toponyms on a modern map, since of the map to measure distances. Since there seems to so often the specifi c details on those earlier maps can have been no compensation for curvature of the earth be comprehended only within the framework of a by any kind of sophisticated projection of the geo- mental construct the pre-modern author had devised graphic data, naturally the accuracy of measurements for a given region. Such constructs may have little to using the grid might be only approximate and proba- do with with “geographic reality” as we would know bly worse the farther away one moved from the center it. Each of al-Idrīsī’s regions then must be subject to of the map. Even though Park sides with those who minute analysis, the results of which are likely to believe this (p. 35), one can only speculate whether the show wide variation in terms of anything we might use of the grid on this Song map had anything to do think of as “accuracy.”15 with the sensible instructions for good map making laid out by Pei Xiu back in the 3rd century or whether One of the most challenging aspects of the tasks Jia Dan in the might also have used a grid.16 Park has set for herself is to be able to demonstrate cultural exchange. Texts may suggest how in China or In western Asia, while latitudinal climate divisions in the Islamic world compilers of information about which could be matched with numerical latitudes can the other drew upon the knowledge of those who had be traced back at least to Ptolemy, the earliest extant

207 Islamic maps with a grid illustrate the works of the exchange between geographers in both societies and 14th-century geographer Hamdallāh Mustawfī, al- the transfer of the new coordinate system from Iran though in manuscripts of a later century. In one case to China during the Mongol period” (p. 144). As she the grid covers the land areas on a circular world notes, neither map indicates longitudes and latitudes. map where the cartography seems to be related to the Certainly, as she elaborates, there is ample contextual scheme devised by al-Bīrūnī for depicting the Indian information concerning projects beginning back un- Ocean (see above). In another case (the manuscript der Khubilai in which Muslim experts were involved, apparently from the 16th century), where there is much projects which show how cartography from the Mus- more detail, the grid has been used to position names lim world could have infl uenced the Yuan map. What of locations, one to a square, presumably roughly we cannot know is what role, if any, Chinese might where numerical coordinates would place them. As have had in the production of this map beyond trans- Tibbets has pointed out though, this use of a grid is lating captions for it. quite crude, since there is no sense of adapting it for the curvature of the earth, and the results are certainly It would have been worthwhile here, I think, had she not very precise. What is claimed to be the earliest gone a bit farther and cited Jonathan Bloom’s incisive case of an Islamic map’s having a properly adjusted comment relating to the question of whether Islamic graticule with curved lines for longitude is on a map and Chinese map grids could have infl uenced one illustrating the works of another 14th-century geogra- another. His particular interest is architectural plans which must have used grids, but he also connects this pher, al-Umarī, but it seems almost certain that the graticule was added no earlier than the late 16th cen- with gridded maps and argues for the transmission of tury and likely refl ects a European borrowing.17 the models from East to West. The effective use of maps and architectural plans The earliest extant map produced in China that demands not only that some people be able to displays with reasonable accuracy (by modern stan- draw them but also that other people be able dards) regions in the Islamic Middle East and Central to decode them, and there is no indication that Asia dates from the Yuan (Mongol) period. It has only Chinese and Iranian cartographers and builders the barest representation of geographic features but shared any vocabulary of spatial representation. lays out on a regular grid the names of cities and the Increased contacts with China [in the Mongol divisions of the Mongol Empire in approximately the period] may have presented Chinese gridded locations we would expect on a modern map. While maps to Iranian eyes, but that did not guarantee the map allegedly is based on a late Yuan Dynasty that Iranian viewers were privy to how they were one, its modern survival is in a version included in meant to be read...In short a series of crisscrossed a compilation published by Wei Yuan 魏源 in 1842, parallel lines might have very different functions which contains in the fi rst instance maps based on and meanings in different cultural contexts.19 modern European cartography but also includes some apparently fanciful reconstructions of earlier Chinese The existence of the Yuan-period map and the other ones. Perhaps because of this context, Cordell Yee ig- evidence we have about the employment of Muslim nored the purported Yuan map which Wei claimed experts in China makes it clear that Islamic cartogra- he had copied with only minor emendations from the phy at least to some degree must have been known 14th-century source. In fact, this map had long attract- in East Asia, a knowledge that then continued down ed attention of European scholars, who apparently into the early Ming period. The most famous of the accepted it as authentic.18 As Park explains (and illus- maps that refl ect this is one compiled in in 1402 trates on p. 143), the map is strikingly similar to one of known as the Kangnido (The Map of Integrated Regions the maps of Hamdallāh Mustafī, dated to around 1330 and Terrains and of Historical Countries and Capitals), (though known only from a 16th-century copy) and which drew heavily on Chinese sources but also ob- possibly related to work done two decades earlier in viously used some western, Islamic source. Park and the atelier of the Ilkhanid Grand Vizier Rashīd al-Dīn others understandably analyze it as a way of extrapo- and the even earlier work of a geographer who worked lating what “Chinese geographers” might have come under Ilkhanid patronage, Zakariyā b. Muhammad to understand about the more distant world begin- al-Qazwīnī. The question that scholars have argued ning back in the time of Khubilai. The map centers on over is which of the maps might have infl uenced the a huge China; in the east is a very large Korea, both other. Further, what relationship might this idea of a shown with considerable detail and accuracy. As with gridded map have to the one illustrated by the 12th- the earlier Chinese cartographic traditions, the con- century Song stele? While Park is hesitant to take sides tours of Southeast Asia bear no resemblance to reality, on these questions, she nonetheless concludes that at nor does India.20 The western quarter of this map is least there must have been “some kind of information the one which has attracted great interest, its source

208 (judging from the toponyms transcribed from Arabic is, Chinese maps did not simply revert to a focus only and Persian and the contours) surely from the Islamic on China (p. 166). tradition. On it one can see a recognizable Arabian Not surprisingly, the evidence this provides to il- peninsula and Red Sea, a rather distorted but par- lustrate cultural projects in East Asia under the Mon- tially recognizable Mediterranean, and the Nile River gols has its analogues in the Ilkhanid realm of the extending north from the Mountains of the Moon on West (where Hamdallah Mustawfī, a native of Qaz- an Africa that deceptively has a rough approximation win, worked). As Park indicates, the cultural projects of the contours of Africa as we know it today — that overseen by Rashīd al-Dīn at the beginning of the 14th is, somewhat triangular shaped, with open ocean to century provide vivid evidence of cultural exchange its south and west. While the Persian Gulf here bears (pp. 131–38). While we can but speculate about his lost little correspondence to what one might expect from work on geography (Park would like to believe it ac- earlier Islamic cartography, on the whole one can see tually was completed), we certainly can get an idea of how Islamic maps could have served as the basis for the breadth of his geographic purview from his pio- this depiction of “the West” (see Kauz 2013). neering effort at compiling world history. He surely In her discussion of the Kangnido map, Park elab- had Mongol sources brought directly from the court orates on the Islamic parallels and indicates what of the Great Khan in China. He knew a lot about Yuan seems to be known about the possible Chinese sourc- institutions, although, and here I think we need to be es (which, however, are not extant). Her discussion somewhat more cautious than Park is, his information of the fi rst ever (on an exant map) depiction of “the about earlier Chinese history was cryptic, and the de- whole of” Africa could use some clarifi cation though. pictions of Chinese rulers that illustrated his manu- She does suggest sensibly that the effort to fi t every- script are largely a kind of “orientalist” fantasizing of thing into the rectangular format could explain some real Chinese imperial garb.21 His information on Bud- of the choices made by the cartographer, at the same dhism seems to have derived from an account by a time that she indulges in pure speculation: “perhaps Kashmiri monk. That he devotes attention to the sub- the content [of the map] derived from the fi rsthand ject at all is remarkable. The illustrations to that text observations of some Muslims who sailed around the though are again a kind of curious orientalizing fan- African horn” (p. 105). In support of this tantalizing tasy that mixes styles and motifs from several differ- possibility, she cites the pseudo-historical claims by ent artistic traditions. The artists seem not to have had Gavin Menzies at the same time that she says there in hand (or been willing to use) genuine Buddhist art. is so far no evidence to prove his contentions about The overall picture then is that of a kind of awkward Chinese having sailed around Africa before the Por- splicing of traditions and information, exactly what tuguese. In another place (pp. 148–50), she cites al- one might expect of cross-cultural exchange where the Umarī’s account about a maritime expedition sent out two parties to it came at the material from such differ- by the Sultan of Mali to see how far one could venture ent perspectives and traditions. in the encircling sea. However, that proves little, since A somewhat different perspective on what cultural the vessels vanished; if they discovered anything, we exchange East and West under the Ilkhanids might cannot know what it might have been. have produced is to be found in the relatively recently In fact, a close examination of the Africa of the discovered miscellany The Treasury of Tabriz (Safi neh-yi Kangnido map shows that it relies on a source that Tabrīz) compiled and copied apparently by one Abū had even a garbled idea of the Nile (shown as fl owing ’l-Majd primarily in the 1320s. Park focuses on its map into the Red Sea), and no information whatsoever on (pp. 140–41), which has clear affi nities with the 13th- points anywhere close to the southern tip of the conti- century one attributed to al-Qazwīnī, but without any nent. The schematic representation of the source of the discussion of why the manuscript of The Treasury is Nile is just that, schematic, and a huge lake is shown so interesting.22 As she notes, its map does include a in the center of the continent. This is surely short of a few place names important in the Mongol period that map with “detailed, colored illustrations of the Afri- were not on the earlier map and distinguishes north- can continent,” nor can we consider that the Mediter- ern and southern China, older information that in the ranean Sea on the map is “quite precise,” even if one Yuan period was anachronistic once China had been might allow some margin for interpretation in stating unifi ed. Yet there is little here to suggest any kind of that the map has “fairly accurate contours” (pp. 105– profound transmission of new knowledge about the 06). Yet the map is hugely interesting, seeming to rep- Far East. While the map may have been intended to resent a somewhat awkward splicing of cartographic illustrate a couple of very short texts about climates material from two conceptually very different tradi- and regions, as Sonja Brentjes has observed, the in- tions. And, as Park shows, the tradition represented formation in those texts and on the map does not al- in this map continued well into the Ming era — that ways agree. Brentjes also notes a number of unusual

209 features of the map, some positive (“towns in Turke- She has accomplished a lot of what she set out to do. stan and Afghanistan are mostly placed correctly”), Yes, she might have gotten more out of some of her but much distorted (“in Europe, Africa, western Asia, reading (and perhaps thereby modifi ed her analytical Arabian peninsula the localities are often misplaced”; approach). Had she had more helpful editors, I think “the Gulf of Bengal [Bahr al-Hind] goes far to the some of the inconsistencies could have smoothed north (6th climate)...”). The manuscript also contains over. As one who cannot read the sources in the origi- brief descriptive geographical material on Tabriz and nal Arabic or East Asian languages, I should be the its immediate surroundings. last to suggest additions to her bibliography, though in at least one case, such would have helped avoid a So there is little here to suggest more than a passing signifi cant mistake.23 It would have been nice to have interest in the geography of the wider and contempo- had a more complete index. rary world. While the compiler was interested in some of the recent Ilkhanid political history and the history Of course the big topic here is that designated by her of Tabriz, much more of his attention was devoted to sub-title: cross-cultural exchange. Even to attempt to literature: he copied a lot of poetry and literary criti- give it justice would require a whole set of volumes, cism. He had some interest in astronomy and astrol- so that the relevant evidence from art, literature, vari- ogy (represented in a treatise by the famous Ilkhanid ous intellectual disciplines and technology might be astronomer Nasīr al-Dīn Tūsī), the occult and mysti- treated in depth. To contextualize any one area of ex- cism. He also copied some advice (wisdom) literature. change with at best only passing reference to the many The manuscript is so important because it provides a others is a practical necessity for a dissertation project rare, nearly intact snapshot of the range of interests of such as this. The result though left this reader wonder- a member of the educated Persian elite who was not, ing how much “exchange” really is represented by her however, a scholar on the level of Rashīd al-Dīn. evidence concerning geographic knowledge. Yes, one can speculate, for example, that “in the open interna- This is the kind of contextualization that can help tional atmosphere of seaport Quanzhou, where local enhance our appreciation of where the geographic Chinese regularly interacted with many foreigners, knowledge of the “other,” which is the focus of Park’s some of them probably recalled diverse geographic book, really fi ts. It is exactly such contextualization ideas originating in ancient periods in order to break that Yee emphasizes is needed if we are to understand from the authoritative Chinese-centered worldview” what cartography meant in China beyond merely the (p. 115). Arguably too much of the emphasis here is drawing and printing of some maps which may or on geographic knowledge for purely practical eco- may not, by modern measure, be deemed accurate: nomic or political purposes; in fact we get too little “In effect, the map serves as a substitute for reality, of what may have constituted the “Chinese-centered implying a high degree of formal likeness. But in ac- worldview” or, what one can reasonably posit was an cordance with Chinese aesthetic theory, the physical Islamic (or Iranian, or Arab) one. A listing of products world and the psychological become fused. Physical available in a far-off place may have practical value, descriptions are intertwined with acts of perception but is obtaining them going to change either one’s ... cartographic forms were meant not only to repro- perception of oneself or of the other culture? A Mus- duce but to express” (History of Cartography 1994, pp. lim map with a poorly drawn China off on the fringes 162–63). Might this be the case in the Islamic world? of a world centered on Arabia or Iran hardly can be Not necessarily, but to ask that question might evoke construed to indicate that there was much interest in some interesting answers. the “other” any more than does a Chinese map listing There is much more to be said about Park’s book. the names of a few western locations in its margins. A For example, I met here for the fi rst time Wang Da- travel account by someone not familiar with the local yuan 汪大渊 (1311–50) who wrote about travels along languages is no more likely in pre-modern times to the routes all the way to Africa which Park would like tell us of meaningful exchange than it would in our to believe he actually saw (as she indicates, there are own time. doubts about how far west he may have gone) (pp. The instances where it might be possible to fi nd 114–18). Her treatment of the records from the Zheng some deeper level of interaction and understanding He 鄭和 voyages of the fi rst third of the 15th century arguably are few though they may, of course, be high- is of interest, even if one may be uncomfortable with ly signifi cant. However, if, as seems to be the case, on her implication that one can read real geography off both ends of this “exchange” there was a “decline” in the schematic navigation maps preserved in Mao knowledge of (and interest in) the other by the time Yuanyi’s 茅元儀 Treatise of Military Preparation (Wubei one arrives in the 16th century, then might that not zhi 武備志) of 1621. In short, as the reader may sense, have to raise questions about how meaningful was the I have found her book to be immensely stimulating. exchange that had earlier taken place? Lurking in the

210 background here are the concerns of so much of the twelfth and thirteenth Centuries, entited Chu-fan-chi. Tr. and traditional scholarship whose standard for assessment annotated by Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill. St. Peters- is the modern world. Ostensibly this was the starting burg: Printing Offi ce of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, point for the noted Arabist Sir Hamilton Gibb (1955) 1911. when he addressed the question of what constitutes de la Vaissière 2005 conditions for successful borrowing from one cultural Étienne de la Vaissière. Sogdian Traders: A History, tr. James sphere to another. But his analytical approach went Ward. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2005. beyond just holding up a modern standard. Borrow- de Weerdt 2009 ing, he argued, is a sign of cultural vitality, but for bor- Hilde de Weerdt. “Maps and Memory: Readings of Car- rowings to take and be creatively re-worked and inte- tography in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Song China.” grated into the receiving culture, it is necessary that Imago Mundi 61/2 (2009): 145–67. there be a predisposition for their reception. On the face of it, in certain very specifi c circumstances there Different Aspects 2003 was a remarkable growth of geographic knowledge The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture. Volume Five. Culture thanks to active contacts between China and Islamic and Learning in Islam, ed. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2003. west Asia, but if it seems not to have developed into a mature plant in either place, then we might possibly Dzhakson et al. 2013 discover that the soil and climate in which we might T[at’iana] N[ikolaevna] Dzhakson, I[rina] G[ennadievna] have hoped it would fl ourish were better suited to a Konovalova, A[leksandr] V[asil’evich] Podosinov. Imagines different species. Mundi: antichnost’ i srednevekov’e [Imagines Mundi: Antiq- uity and the Middle Ages]. Moskva: Rukopisnye pamiatniki About the author Drevnei Rusi, 2013. Eurasian Infl uences 2013 Daniel Waugh is editor of The Silk Road. Before retir- Eurasian Infl uences on Yuan China, ed. Morris Rossabi. Singa- ing from the University of Washington, he co-taught pore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2013. courses on the European “Age of Discovery,” and more recently he has published on medieval travel ac- Flecker 2002 counts about Central Eurasia. Michael Flecker. The Archaeological Excavation of the 10th Cen- tury Intan Shipwreck. BAR International Series 1047. Ox- ford: Archaeopress, 2002. References Gibb 1955 Arab Classical Accounts 1989 Hamilton Gibb. “The Infl uence of Islamic Culture on Medi- Arabic Classical Accounts of India and China, tr. and commen- eval Europe.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 38/1 (1955): taries S. Maqbul Ahmad. Shimla: Indian Institute of Ad- 82–95. vanced Study, 1989. Hall 2004 Blair 1995 Kenneth Hall. “Local and International Trade and Traders Sheila S. Blair. A Compendium of Chronicles: Rashid al-Din’s in the Straits of Melaka Region: 600–1500.” Journal of the Eco- Illustrated History of the World. Nasser D. Khalili Collection nomic and Social History of the Orient 47/3 (2004): 213–60. of Islamic Art, 27. London: Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1995. Hecker 1993 Felicia J. Hecker. “A Fifteenth-Century Chinese Diplomat in Bloom 2001 Herat.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 3/1 (1993): Jonathan M. Bloom. Paper before Print: The History and Impact 85–98. of Paper in the Islamic World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001. Hedin 1922 Sven Hedin. Southern Tibet, Vol. 8. Stockholm: Lithographic Bloom 2008 Institute of the General Staff of the Swedish Army, 1922. Jonathan M. Bloom. “Lost in Translation: Gridded Plans and History of Cartography 1993 Maps along the Silk Road.” In: Journey 2008, pp. 83–96. The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 1, Cartography in Bretschneider 1967/1888 the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, ed. J. B. Har- Emil Bretschneider. Mediaeval Researches from East Asian ley and David Woodward. Chicago; London: Univ. of Chi- Sources: Fragments towards the Knowledge of the Geography and cago Pr., 1993. History of Central Asia and Western Asia from the 13th to the 17th History of Cartography 1994 Century, 2 vols. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967 (reprint of 1888 ed.). The History of Cartography, Volume Two, Book Two: Cartogra- phy in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J. Chau Ju-Kua 1911 B. Harley and David Woodward. Chicago; London: Univ. of Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Chicago Pr., 1994.

211 Hodges and Whitehouse 1983 Qiu 2011 Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse. Mohammed Char- Qiu Yihao 邱轶皓. “Yutu yuanzi haixi lai—Taolisi wenxuan lemagne & the Origins of Europe: Archaeology and the Pirenne jizhen suozai shijie ditu kao 舆图原自海西来 – <桃里寺文 Thesis. London: Duckworth, 1983. 献集珍>所载世界地图考 [The exotic geography knowledge Johns and Savage-Smith 2003 from the Ilkhanate – A study of the world map in Safi neh-yi 西域研究 Jeremy Johns and Emilie Savage-Smith. “The Book of Curi- Tabrīz]. Xiyu yanjiu 82/2 (2011): 23-37, with brief osities: A Newly Discovered Series of Islamic Maps.” Imago English summary 142–43. Mundi 55 (2003): 7–24. Rapoport 2008 Journey 2008 Yossef Rapoport. “The Book of Curiosities: A Medieval Is- The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road, eds. Philippe lamic View of the East.” In: Journey 2008, pp. 155–71. Forêt and Andreas Kaplony. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Rossabi 1983 Kaplony 2008 Morris Rossabi. “A Translation of Ch’en Ch’eng’s Hsi-yü Andreas Kaplony. “Comparing al-Kashgarī’s Map to his fan-kuo chin.” Ming Studies 17 (1983): 49–59. Text: On the Visual Language, Purpose, and Transmission Rougeulle 2004 of Arabic-Islamic Maps.” In: Journey 2008, pp. 137–53. Axelle Rougeulle. “Le Yémen entre Orient et Afrique: Shar- Kauz 2013 ma, un entrepôt du commerce médiéval sur la côte sud de Ralph Kauz. “Some Notes on the Geographical and Carto- l’Arabie.” Annales islamologiques 38/1 (2004): 201–53. graphical Impacts from Persia to China: The Persian Gulf Schafer 1951 as Depicted in The Map of Integrated Regions and Terrains Edward H. Schafer. “Iranian Merchants in T’ang Dynasty and of Historical Countries and Capitals and The Map of Tales.” Semitic and Oriental Studies Presented to William Pop- Persia in the Nuzhat al-Qulūb of Hamdallah Mustawfī.” In: per, University of California Publications in Semitic Philol- Eurasian Infl uences 2013, pp. 159–67. ogy 11 (1951): 403–22. Muqaddasī 2001 Seyed-Gohrab and McGlinn 2007 Al-Muqaddasī. The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Re- A. A. Seyed-Gohrab and S. McGlinn [eds.] The Treasury of gions. Ahsan al-Taqāsīm fī Ma‘rifat al-Aqālīm, tr. Basil Collins. Tabriz: The Great Il-Khanid Compendium. Amsterdam: Rozen- Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing, 2001. berg Publishers; West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Park 2010 Press, 2007. Hyunhee Park. “A Buddhist Woodblock-Printed Map and Shipwrecked 2010 th Geographic Knowledge in 13 Century China.” Crossroads— Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds, ed. Regina Studies on the History of Exchange Relations in the East Asian Krahl et al. Washington, D. C.: The Arthur M. Sackler Gal- World 1 (September 2010): 55–78. lery, Smithsonian Institution; Singapore: National Heritage Park 2013 Board and Singapore Tourism Board, 2010. Hyunhee Park. “Cross-Cultural Exchange and Geographic Tampoe 1989 Knowledge of the World in Yuan China.” In: Eurasian Infl u- Moira Tampoe. Maritime Trade between China and the West. ences 2013, pp. 125–58. An Archaeological Study of the Ceramics from Siraf (Persian Gulf), 8th to 15th centuries A. D. BAR International Series 555. Podosinov 1978 [Oxford: B.A.R], 1989. A[laksandr V[asil’evich] Podosinov. “Kartografi chesii prin- tsip v strukture geografi cheskikh opisanii drevnosti (post- von Grunebaum 1962 anovka problemy) [The Cartographic Principle in the Struc- Gustave E. von Grunebaum. “The Concept of Cultural Clas- ture of Geographic Descriptions in Antiquity (a Formulation sicism” Ch. IV in idem, Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural of the Question)]. In: Metodika izucheniia drevneishikh istoch- Identity. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1962, pp. 73–96. nikov po istorii narodov SSSR (Moskva: Nauka, 1978), pp. 22–45. Wheatley 1996 Paul Wheatley. Review of: The History of Cartography, Volume Podosinov and Chekhin 1991 Two, Book Two: Cartography in the Traditional East and South- A. V. Podosinov and Leonid Chekhin. Review of: The His- east Asian Societies. Imago Mundi 48 (1996): 216–19. tory of Cartography, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward, Zakhoder 1962, 1967 Vol. 1. Imago mundi 43 (1991): 112–23. B[oris]. N. Zakhoder. Kaspiiskii svod svedenii o Vostochnoi Ev- Ptak 2001 rope. Gorgan i Povolzh’e v IX-X vv. [The Caspian compilation Roderich Ptak. “Quanzhou: at the Northern Edge of a South- of information about Eastern Europe: Gorgan and the Volga east Asian ‘Mediterranean’.” In: Angela Schottenhammer, region in the 9th-10th centuries]. Moskva: Izd-vo. vostochnoi ed. The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000- literatury, 1962; Kaspiiskii svod svedenii o Vostochnoi Evrope. 1400. Leiden, etc.: Brill, 2001, pp. 395–427. Tom II. Bulgary, mad’iary, narody Severa, pechenegi, rusy, sla-

212 which surely in many cases must have been short of the viane [... The Bulgars, Madjars, peoples of the North, Pech- Middle East. See, for example, Flecker 2002, pp. 132–33. engs, Rus and Slavs]. Moskva: Nauka, Glavnaia redaktsiia Unfortunately, Park somewhat garbles (pp. 65–66 and vostochnoi literatury, 1967. notes 32–35) the information we have for two of the really Zhao 2004 important wrecks, known respectively as the Intan and Zhao Bing. “L’importation de la céramique chinoise à Shar- Belitung ships, for the locations where they were found. ma (Hadramaout) au Yemen.” Annales islamologiques 38/1 It is easy to confl ate the information about them (I have (2004): 255–84. done so myself), in the process confusing what is known about their structure (for Intan, we can only hypothesize, for Belitung we know much more; the two, according to Notes Flecker, were most likely of different construction and 1. She cites Bloom 2001, where he analyzes the story about provenance) and attributing the cargo of one to the other. the transmission of paper-making technology via prisoners For the Belitung wreck, which is perhaps the best one to taken at Talas. However, she ignores the fact that he then support her arguments about trade to the West, it is too bad (see pp. 43–45) questions this tale in favor of an argument she saw only the preliminary reports, which now have been about the acquisition of that knowledge in Central Asia and supplemented by the substantial volume Shipwrecked 2010. the Middle East well prior to the battle. 4. See Yee’s several essays in History of Cartography 1994, 2. While Park and others refer to Étienne de la Vaissière’s especially starting on p. 65, for his development of ideas masterful treatment of the Sogdians, where he very about a new approach to the study of Chinese maps. See carefully analyzes the evidence about the reasons for the also the enthusiastic review by Paul Wheatley (1996), which end of Sogdian overland trade to China, what tends to explains why Yee’s approach is so interesting. escape notice is the fact that his concern is specifi cally with 5. Zhao’s work has long been known (and is much cited) the Sogdian trade. I think he leaves open the question of from Hirth and Rockhill’s copiously annotated translation whether other overland trade routes were important, ones (Chau Ju-Kua 1911). that may not be connected necessarily with Sogdian activity. See de la Vaissière 2005, Part 4. 6. It would also be useful for the earlier Tang-period to explore the subject self-perception with reference to the 3. While commenting in any detail on this evidence is “other” by looking at belles lettres. See, for example, Schafer clearly not Park’s purpose (she is following expert opinion 1951, which Park does not cite. here), one might wish to interject a note of caution regarding what the mere presence of some Chinese ceramics excavated 7. For those who do not read Russian, there is a summary in the Middle East may suggest. One can show an apparent of the important points in the long review Podosinov wrote rise and fall of such imports by doing a statistical time series with Leonid Chekhin (1991) on The History of Cartography, from any excavation site (such as Siraf), but the absolute Vol. 1. percentage of recovered Chinese ceramics from any of these 8. See the explicit statements by Gerald R. Tibbetts in Middle Eastern sites tends to be quite small compared to the History of Cartography 1993: “One thing not taken up by very large quantity of ceramics produced in the Middle East Arab scholars was Ptolemy’s chapter on the construction of and found at the same sites. At Siraf, for example, in what geographical map projections... The link between Ptolemy’s appears to be the peak period of the importation of Chinese mathematics and actual map production seems never to have ceramics, the fi rst quarter of the 9th century, they constitute been made. The impetus Ptolemy’s work gave to the Arabs, less than 1 % of the fi nds, even if this represents a several- however, does seem to have aroused an interest in map fold increase over the percentage for the preceding decades. production...” (pp. 94–95), and “al-Istakhrī and Ibn Hawqal And that bump in the statistics is but a brief one. See Hodges [key representatives of the Balkhī School of cartography— and Whitehouse 1983, esp. pp. 145–49; for the detailed DW] show no interest in projections or mathematical analysis of the ceramics, see Tampoe 1989. Should we read astronomy. Neither do they mention longitude and latitude this as evidence for a “dramatic” increase in the maritime in any form, or any sort of map construction” (p. 115). On trade with China? Evidence from one site in Yemen for a the response to Ptolemy’s listings of geographic coordinates somewhat later period is more impressive, though still less though, see the good summary in Anton M. Heinen’s chapter than 4% of the ceramic fi nds (Rougeulle 2004, p. 215; see also on geography in Different Aspects 2003, esp. pp. 472–77. Zhao 2004). Of considerable relevance for any study of this 9. For the integral text in English translation, see Arabic subject is the evidence about the spread of Islamic-world Classical Accounts 1989, pp. 33–57. imitations of Chinese wares, which apparently are more numerous than the actual Chinese examples. While Park 10. In support of this statement, Park refers to an important appreciates (e.g., p. 45) the evidence underwater archaeology article by Kenneth Hall (2004), ignoring, however, one is providing about the capacity of ships trading from China of his most important points, which is that the Southeast to carry large quantities of ceramics (as evidenced in part Asian component of that trade deserves attention it has not by the size of some cargoes that have been recovered), some received by historians who have traditionally emphasized caution is also needed in what conclusions this may support the Middle Eastern or Chinese ends of the route. In other regarding increased trade with West Asia — to gloss over words, much of what he says implicitly undermines her the Southeast Asia connections is to miss a lot. So far we approach, something that perhaps was inconvenient to know little about the ultimate destinations of such cargoes, admit. The important subject of the changing emphases

213 in the geographic focus of writers in southeastern this map on pp. 100–103 and 142–44. Unlike in the book, China regarding the maritime routes has been treated where her discussion is broken up into different sections, extensively by Roderich Ptak, whose work is listed in Park’s she provides a more coherent treatment of the map in a bibliography, even if it is not clear she has absorbed some of separate essay (2013). She does not cite Albert Herrmann’s his nuanced observations (see, for example, Ptak 2001). long appendix to Hedin 1922, which reproduces a number 11. For a translation which includes images of the maps, of the earliest maps from China. The Yuan one is on Pl. 8, see Muqaddasī 2001. facing p. 278, with a facsimile of the original Chinese print and a parallel version with translations of all the captions 12. This is one of the points made by Andreas Kaplony on it. He suggests that it must be a Chinese translation of (2008) in a valuable article which Park cites even if she may a western, probably Arab map, perhaps via a version on have missed that detail. which the place names had been written in Mongolian. 13. I think she might gotten more out of the two articles 19. Bloom 2008 (in the fi nal typescript version of this she cites: Johns and Savage-Smith 2003; Rapoport 2008. book which I am using, the quotation is on p. 59). Park cites 14. An example is in Irina G. Konovalova’s careful Bloom’s article even if not engaging with this conclusion of analysis of the descriptions of the Black Sea by al-Idrīsī, Ibn his. Sa’īd and Abū al-Fidā (Dzhakson et al. 2013, summarized on 20. Park is explicit about this, even though she then p. 277). Each author had his own purpose, which governed overemphasizes “accuracy” when discussing the areas his selection of data. Of course this could be interpreted as the map depicts further west: “The map jams the Indian progress, in that it refl ects conscious decisions about the use subcontinent between China and the Islamic world, depicts of evidence, where one might at least assume alternatives Southeast Asian countries as small islands, and omits a were available and examined fi rst. complete coastline between China and the Islamic world” (p. 122). 15. See Dzhakson et al., esp. p. 199. All three authors, who have written extensively on early concepts of geographic 21. For a valuable analysis of the illustrations to Rashīd space, offer in this book stimulating ideas about newer al-Dīn’s history, see Blair 1995. approaches to understanding pre-modern geography which, 22. Her source here is Qiu 2011. The article contains if applied to the material Park covers, could move us well what appears (in the pdf fi le I have seen) to be a very poor beyond her traditional methodology. Konovalova’s section reproduction of the map and is devoted mainly to the in Imagines Mundi is devoted to Islamic geography, with a identifi cation of the geographic names written on it. There is particular focus on al-Idrīsī, on whose material concerning a facsimile edition of the whole manuscript which I have not Eastern Europe she has also published an annotated text seen and Park does not cite. Neither does she use the very edition and a separate monograph. It would be diffi cult informative collection of articles edited by Seyed-Gohrab to recognize the Black Sea as we know it from al-Idrīsī’s and McGlinn (2007). The brief description of the geographic sectional map of it, even though he had at least some very content in the latter is on pp. 56–58 and specifi cally on the good sources of information from those who had been there. map, pp. 208–09, esp. n. 290, quoting the analysis by Sonja 16. Compare the treatment of this topic by Cordell Yee in Brentjes. History of Cartography 1994, esp. pp. 46ff. 23. In the early 15th century, the mission of Ch’en Ch’eng to the Timurid ruler Shāhrukh met him in his capital Herat 17. See the discussion by Tibbets in History of Cartography (not Samarkand; cf. Park, pp. 168–69), and Ch’en Ch’eng’s 1993, pp. 148–50. He reproduces the Mustawfī maps on pp. remarkable description is of Herat. In describing this 150 and 152, and al-Umarī’s map on p. 153, where, however, mission, unusually for her Park seems not to have read the graticule is not visible. Park’s reproduction of that the original text, the Herat section of which is available in same map shows the lines clearly, probably enhanced by English translation in Rossabi 1983. And she might have her source, Fuat Sezgin, who apparently suggests that the been inspired to write more about it, had she read the th graticule dates to the 14 century. careful analysis published by Felicia Hecker (1993), who 18. Emil Bretschneider (1967/1888, Vol. 2) published it demonstrates how precise the descriptive material is and with transliterated names and devoted a lengthy analysis to how impressive it is that Ch’en was able to transcribe a good identifying them with known locations. He calls it the “only many Persian words accurately, even if it is likely he did not interesting map in Wei Yuan’s book and dismisses the others know the language. as “pure inventions of his fancy” (p. 4, n. 785). Park discusses

214